And So It Goes
by Audrey2419
Summary: The day the super flu hit was like any other... A retelling of The Stand using the Leverage Team.


**Author's Note: I don't own Leverage or ****_The Stand_****. This is just for my own amusement. This was written for Leverageland's GoodWrites Challenge. A retelling of ****The Stand**** with the Leverage Team.**

* * *

The day the super flu finally spread to Boston was a Wednesday like any other the team had spent. By the next Monday the world had changed. Nate and Sophie emerged from a romantic weekend spent together with no telephone or email to find the city a disaster area and only Hardison sitting in the office trying desperately to get any news of the others. Parker, who had disappeared with Archie the previous week, had not been in contact since Thursday, and Eliot had gone off the grid on Friday searching for her.

The news coming to them from the web was grim. Thousands of people had died already, and Boston had rapidly become a war zone when services had shut down as more and more people became infected. Nate sat next to the hacker and studied what Hardison had managed to ferret out of all of the stories coming from cities like Los Angeles and New York. There were horror stories of survivors being murdered as they attempted to escape the cities, bodies rotting in the streets, and secret government organizations doing experiments on survivors. The headquarters was secure, and Nate made the decision for the three to wait for Eliot and Parker to come home. Thanks to Eliot's planning they had plenty of food stored, and Hardison had made their office as impenetrable as possible. Though not necessarily their forte, waiting seemed to be the only sensible course of action, so they settled in, hoping that the hitter would find the thief and that both could find their way home.

By Wednesday Nate had become more worried than he wanted to admit to. He trusted Eliot's skill, and knew that Parker would do what was necessary to survive, however, as the city deteriorated around them, Nate had begun to wonder just how long the three should wait before leaving. Sophie walked in the room and sat beside him at the desk.

"Eliot will find her, Nate. Let's just give it a few more days."

"If anyone could do it... If she's alive he'll find her." Nate said decisively.

Two weeks after the arrival of Captain Tripps the trio had almost given up hope of ever seeing their friends again. The dreams had begun to push them towards Boulder, and the decision was made to make their way there and hope that Eliot and Parker would eventually find them. When the sun rose the next day they loaded Lucille and begun their journey west.

* * *

Eliot sat in front of a small campfire and watched the bright orange flames flicker. He was bone tired. First, finding Parker had been no picnic. He had found her and an ailing Archie holed up in a Chicago hotel. Waiting out the inevitable end of the super flu had taken only a couple of days. Helping her bury her de facto father and then convincing her to head towards Boston had taken several days more. Once he had finally accomplished that it then fell to him to figure a way out of the cesspool that Chicago had rapidly descended into once the flu took control. The few surviving gang members controlled the streets, and Eliot knew that getting the two of them out would be dangerous but not impossible.

Once they escaped the city, they began the trip back towards Boston. Two days into that the dreams began. It was because of the dreams that Eliot found himself sitting in front of their campfire. He had been feeling the urge to change directions, and the last dream had seemed to confirm that feeling. He could remember the voice whisper,

_"They've left Boston now... comin' to me. Come to Boulder, Eliot Spencer. I'm Abagail Freemantle, but everyone just calls me Mother Abagail..."_

Eliot felt the presence at his left shoulder and simply nodded to Parker as she sat beside him.

"I had another one of those dreams, Eliot."

"Which ones? The one with Mother Abagail or..."

"No... I like her, this was the other guy. He really makes me feel strange... he scares me." She took a deep breath and continued. "I don't think we should go to Boston..."

"You too, huh? Yeah, I think we need to change direction and head to Boulder. We'll find them in Boulder."

Parker put her small hand on top of Eliot's larger one and sighed. "Boulder. That sounds good."

"We'll leave at dawn. Be ready." He twined his fingers with hers and gave them a gentle squeeze. "We'll find them. I promise you that. We will find them."

The pair finally crawled into their separate sleeping bags to try and rest before dawn. Once dawn arrived Eliot woke Parker, packed their meager belongings onto his motorcycle and they headed west this time trying desperately to find more survivors, and hopefully their friends.

Further from Boulder in Las Vegas an evil entity waited... waited for its moment to try and initiate the ultimate battle between good and evil. The entity, who was going by the name Randall Flagg, would draw followers to it just as Mother Abagail would to her, and the battle would be the eternal one for the control of man's soul. As the two sides converged on their separate cities the battle lines were drawn, and the struggle would begin.

And so it goes...


End file.
